Gay marriage, good government

Our opinion: New York’s same-sex marriage law is upheld in court. Could the next great legislative triumph come about in a more open, less controversial way?

Now come the muted yet satisfied cheers on State Street, beginning in Governor Cuomo’s office and extending to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office. The state’s gay marriage law has survived a lingering court challenge.

Relief is in order, surely, since the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state Senate did nothing illegal when it voted to legalize same-sex marriage thirteen months ago. Pride, too, of course, because passing that law was the right thing to do.

But what about reflection?

Just because the court says the Senate didn’t violate the state’s Open Meetings Law — as the anti-gay marriage group New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedom had argued — doesn’t mean that such a great moment for civil rights is much of an example of how government should work.

On a topic as vital as gay marriage, especially, the machinations of state government should have been on full display, with no room for anyone to allege secrecy or undue political expediency.

stead, what should be a grand chapter in New York’s history ends with the court overlooking private meetings of the Senate Republicans before four members defected to vote for gay marriage. One of those meetings was attended by Mr. Cuomo; another was attended by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Neither, of course, are Republicans.

“Even assuming, arguendo, that the Bloomberg and Cuomo meetings violated the OML, we would not invalidate the MEA and the marriages performed thereunder,” the court’s ruling says in its references to the Open Meetings Law and the Marriage Equality Act, as the gay marriage legislation is officially known.

We would have written a similar decision. It’s just too bad that gay marriage couldn’t have been upheld without such a distracting caveat.

The decision, written by Justice Eugene Fahey, goes on to conclude that the legal, if unusual, lobbying of the Republican senators was followed by the approval of the gay marriage law at a “regular session of the Senate that was open to the public” — as if that’s an endorsement of how it happened.

The Appellate Division oddly pays no attention to the objections of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedom that were viewed so sympathetically by acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Wiggins in his ruling last year allowing the challenge to the gay marriage to proceed.

Justice Wiggins was harshly critical of how Mr. Cuomo prevailed in using what’s known as a message of necessity — provided so the Senate could vote last June 24, rather than three days later.

Mr. Cuomo was insisting that the normal process of letting this historic legislation properly age, even for just three days, would further delay the long-denied rights of some 50,000 same-sex couples across New York.

Justice Wiggins found that to be disingenuous at best. Maybe his reasoning has sunk in at last.

There’s evidence that the Cuomo administration may be thinking better of ramming bills through the Legislature. Justice Wiggins’ admonishment of last November was followed by an even bigger outcry earlier this year: On March 14, so much unrelated state government business was hastily passed at once with little debate that the legislative package was nicknamed the “Big Ugly.” That drew some deserved criticism, both inside and outside the Capitol.

It’s worth noting that Mr. Cuomo issued no messages of necessity at the recent end of this legislative session, which closed without the bum’s rush New Yorkers have come to expect to greet those who hope for thoughtful debate. In Albany, this passes for progress.

“The integrity of our legislative process is at stake, and it is worth defending,” says the Rev. Jason McGuire of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms.

Just because he’s so wrong about gay marriage doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a valid point about how it was achieved.

9 Responses

Here is a better idea. Stop using lifestyle choices to determine taxation and benefits handed out by the state. For some Marriage is just not a viable undertaking. As a single person I pay some $4,000 more in taxes than my married counterparts and use half the services. How about a fair (meaning unbiased and without prejudice) system whereby we don’t judge people based on their lifestyle choices?

While transparency is usually a plus in terms of good government, it is a bit ridiculous to suggest that every meeting and/or discussion related to all government decisionmaking should be open and public.

Should every meeting the president holds in the oval office be broadcast on cspan? Of course not.

When a legislator meets with an elderly constituent in a government office, does that conversation have to be made public? That would be one way to virtually ensure that no constituent ever speaks with their elected representatives again.

should a governor be prohibited from ever having an off the record conversation with a reporter in a public building? I think that such a prohibition would be counterproductive and damaging to the common good.

Should jury deliberations be broadcast? Should attorney meetings in judges chambers be televised?

Of course not, even though these interactions are held in a public, taxpayer funded building, and even though the judges and jurors are receiving taxpayer funded salaries or jury- duty stipends.

Government is made up of human beings. In order for any level of government to actually work, (or ANY public or private sector entity for that matter) there are times when the human beings that constitute that entity need to communicate directly and candidly with one another.

That’s not bad government, and to suggest that it is is both wrong and silly.

Like many things in life, there is a sensible, happy medium that must be found here.

this lawsuit was brought by bapist ministers, todays inheritors of the same type of people who gave us slavery as per the bible and the KKK and segregation.

And gave Aemrica laws against eg inter-racial marriage, justified as protecting the sanctity of the white race. In as many as 41 states

Finally the last of these were abolished in 1967. A little known fact – most of these only banned white women from marrying black men. the other way around was ok since in the bad peoples minds, was the man was raping the white wife.

just as the slave master would rape his slave women to get more field hands.

the whole article is just another devious sway of hating gay people in the name of God. While they proclaim their love of gays, because they dont know the difference between two 4 letter words

love and hate.

Jesus / God s going to have to build an extension to purgatory or hell for these people in the end

Can you DOCUMENT your wild claim that a majority of New York State voters have the mental disorder, homophobia, Cassius? Can you document this mental disorder homophobia is why “your publications are in peril”?

Homosexuality is either an accident of birth (an evolutionary dead end) or a mental aberration (i.e. priests and little boys) in either case most of us could care less about matters that do not concern us. To attribute how you perceived to a mental aberration rather a consequences of your failure to respect another’s individuality is nothing more than failing to realize that you cannot expect to get what you will not give.

This is not to say respecting others differences is easy. In response to hearing that the practice of homosexuality was an offense against God I asked if good Christians could modernize religious teaching by punishing adultery with private a stoning in place of a public stoning, but in the end it is the productive thing to do.

# 4’s view on who gave us slavery is in error: Europeans bought the losers in local conflicts from the winners. ( I have never believed that whites are so superior to blacks that they could catch them on their home territory)

As for #4’s views about the KKK conquering a group inevitable produces resentments that take many forms with none of them noble. (If you went to grade school in this country you know that the country was formed as a compact of states and thus the view that a state could with draw from this compact was not unreasonable.)